Lesson 1

Taoist internal breathing: feeling the breath

Stand or sit comfortably, eyes and mouth closed.
The tongue rests comfortably on the roof of the mouth, with the front of it lightly touching the upper front teeth.

Relax all the muscles in your face.
Allow your mind to become aware of your breath coming in through your nostrils as you breathe in and out.

Feel all the sensations (physical and non-physical) in your nostrils, including the movement of your nose hairs.

Once you feel the movement of the breath inside your nose, continue to follow the sensation of breathing in stages.

As you become aware of your own breathing, let it progressively penetrate the center line of the body and feel everything along the way.

First, to the back of your throat, try to feel your throat “opening up”.

Then to the lungs, solar plexus, navel and then the lower dantien, which is approximately a third of the distance between the navel and the genitals.

Practice for 5 to 10 minutes or more, keeping the 70 percent rule in mind, so that you relax progressively, avoiding tension in the body, breath or mind.

The 70 percent rule dictates that you shouldn’t breathe to 100 percent of your lung capacity, as this creates tension in the chest.

This is a general breathing process.

Gradually make your breaths longer and longer.

Each breath should be calm, smooth and relaxed.

Practice for five or ten minutes.

Lesson 2

Consciously count each of your breaths, first for 2 breaths, then 3, then 4, then 5, then 6, then 7, then 8, then 9 and finally 10 breaths, without losing count or focus.

Start with a series of 10 breaths.
Gradually increase to 2 sets of 10 breaths, then 3, then 4, then 5 sets of 10 breaths until, without being distracted, you feel each inhale and exhale.
Keep track of your count.

At first, you may use your fingers to keep count, but eventually you will want to keep track without any external support, thus strengthening awareness and continuity of mind.

Do your best to breathe and tell the story in a relaxed way, without getting tense.
While you’re counting, don’t project into the future.

Be very attentive, feel all the sensations of each inhale and exhale.

Feel the movement of your breath as it moves the hairs in your nose.

How does each breath feel inside your nostrils?

Follow and feel the connection between each micro-movement of breathing and your conscious perception.

Increase to 2 sets of 10 breaths, then 3, then 4, then 5 sets of 10 breaths, all the while concentrating on your conscious perception.

Lesson 3

Expand your conscious perception of every micro-centimeter of breathing from the nostrils to the base of the throat.

Feel the front, side and back of your throat.

Start with 2 breaths, rest, then take 2 breaths again and repeat until you can do 2 breaths successfully without breaking consciousness.

Now do 4 breaths, etc., until you can do 1 series of 10 breaths, with continuous awareness and without too much tension.

Now work on 1 series of 10, making sure that each breath relaxes all the muscles and nerves in your body.

The next job is to relax the mental tension of mindfulness with each breath.
Continue in this way until your attention can remain focused in a relaxed and comfortable way.

Gradually increase your breathing work from 1 set of 10 breaths to 2, 3, 4 and then 5 sets of 10.

Lesson 4

Start with 2 breaths.

With each inhalation, continue to be aware of your breath in your nose, passing through the center of your body to your lower chest.

Without detaching yourself from the conscious perception of breathing, on the exhale follow the breath back up through the chest, throat, through and out of the nose.
Continue until you can do so without a break in consciousness.

Then, with continuous awareness and body sensation, follow the breath from the inhale through the nose to the throat, through the center of the body to the lower chest, to the middle of the stomach and on the exhale, back up to the chest, throat and through the nose.

Inhale down through the nose, throat and chest, ending at the navel.

Retrace the same path on the exhale.

Practice 2 breaths, rest and continue repeatedly until you can do it with a relaxed body and mind, comfortably and with continuous awareness.

Continue inhaling (from the nose to the navel), breathing down to the middle of the belly, about half the distance between the navel and the pubic hair.
The Chinese call this place the lower dantien.

Practice until you can breathe into the lower dantien with uninterrupted concentration, feeling and awareness, continuously, comfortably and relaxed, both mentally and physically, for 2 full breaths.

Expand to 3 breaths, then to 4 and then to 1 complete set of 10 breaths.

Increase to 2 sets of 10, then 3, 4 and 5 complete sets of 10 breaths.

This exercise will significantly increase your ability to feel inside your body and the power of conscious perception.

Lesson 5

You should now be able to maintain a line of awareness from the nose, through the center of the body to the lower part of the dantien.
From here, do your best to relax your chest completely and don’t use any force on your chest when you breathe.

Let the sensation of the central line inside your body (where your central canal is located), from the middle of your throat to your dantien, expand back and forth until you can feel the whole inside of your belly, micro-centimeter by micro-centimeter.

Now think of your belly as a cylinder and use your breath to expand it equally in all directions from its center line – forward, backward and equidistant to the sides.

At first, focus on the easiest movement, which is the lower belly.
When it’s comfortable, turn your attention to adding the more difficult mid-belly movement.
Finally, concentrate and add the most difficult part of the body to gain control of the solar plexus and diaphragm.

Now, while following the awareness of the breath from the nose to the dantien.

1. As you inhale, feel your belly expand from the center line forward to the skin on the front of your body.
   On the exhale, return your belly to its original position.

2. Now, on the inhale, expand the inside of the body backwards, from the center line to the spine.
   On the exhale, relax your body back to its original position.

3. When inhaling, from the center line of the body, expand backwards and forwards at the same time, towards the skin on the front of the belly and the spine.
   As you exhale, return to the original position.

The simultaneous forward and backward movement is what you want to achieve.
Start with 2 breaths and rest.
Once awareness is continuous, both inwards and outwards and forwards and backwards, increase 1 breath at a time with completely relaxed continuity, to 10 and then to 15 and then to 20 breaths.

If you lose consciousness or drift off, start again from the beginning.

Day by day you will notice the strength of your conscience increasing.

Lesson 6

The focus is now on breathing under the lower ribs.

As you inhale, physically move and expand the inside of your belly to the front and sides.
Feel the breath moving under the lower ribs to stimulate the liver on the right and your spleen on the left;

As you exhale, let your stomach return to its original relaxed position.

Gradually increase your breathing with continuous awareness from 2 to 20 breaths.

Initially, place your hands on the sides of your body to physically test whether they are moving, until, without physical touch, your consciousness alone can tell whether your sides are moving or not.

Lesson 7

Lower Respiration

Concentrate on the inhale, expanding from the center line to the spine and back to the skin, muscles of the lower back and all the way up and to the kidneys.
Return to the original position on the exhale.

Breathing through the kidneys will be more difficult than breathing from the front and sides.

Initially, it helps to lie on the floor, knees in the air, soles of the feet on the floor, with the lower back pressing firmly into the floor.
The pressure of the body pressing into the floor on the inhale and the release of the pressure on the exhale will make it easier to feel the inside of the body.

Breathing with the kidneys is considered very important in Taoist practices.

In traditional Chinese medicine, the kidneys are considered to be the source of a person’s general vitality and sexual capacity.

Energizing the kidneys is of particularly significant importance in terms of developing a healthy body and clear mind.
Chronic exhaustion often reflects weakness in the kidneys.

Progress from two breaths to twenty, with continuous awareness.

Now build up to twenty to thirty breaths, using all parts of your abdominal cavity simultaneously (rather than sequentially).

On the inhale, expand from the center line of the belly forwards, sideways and backwards (kidneys).
Return to the original position on exhalation.

On the inhale, expand the belly like a tube, starting from the center line, between the solar plexus and the lower dantien, simultaneously forward, backward and sideways.
Return the belly to its original position on the exhale.

On the inhale, the belly should expand simultaneously while following the breath from the nose.
On the exhale, it should follow the breath back to the dantien, up the center line of the body and out through the nose, while letting the belly return to its original position.

This method of breathing is called Lower Back Breathing, and it will give your internal organs a wonderful massage.

Just as muscle massage increases general blood circulation, this breathing increases blood circulation in the deeper blood vessels that nourish the internal organs.

This type of breathing can increase the mass of your stomach muscles.
Make sure you only breathe to 70% of your capacity.

Don’t expand your breathing more than is comfortable.

Introduce minimal effort into your breathing.
Regardless of how long it takes to complete an inhale and exhale, this ease in the physical act of breathing is of great benefit.

It continuously reduces tension, strengthens the internal organs, improves the body’s general vitality and mental clarity.

Ease is also key to developing a continuous awareness of the flow of your mind, without mental tension.

Mental stress impairs mental and physical stamina, as well as the ability to concentrate continuously for long periods of time without getting tired or distracted.

Lesson 8

Upper Back BreathingNow let’s combine lower back breathing and full belly breathing with upper back breathing.

The lungs are built like a bag.
If, when inflating a bag, you hold the back of it still, the bag will inflate forward.
This is how most people breathe, causing the chest to protrude outwards.
However, if you hold the front of the bag still, the bag will inflate backwards.
This is what we do with the chest in Taoist breathing.

The front of the chest (the sternum and chest muscles) relaxes completely and doesn’t move at all, as the lungs expand backwards towards the spine.

As you do this, allow the shoulder blades to move away from the spine and let the ribs and shoulders soften and move sideways.

This action will release some of the anatomical connections that prevent the lungs from fully expanding backwards to their maximum capacity.

Now, two forces combine simultaneously to provide the heart with a continuous massage with each breath, which is absent or diminished in regular breathing with the chest projected outwards:

(1) the expansion of the ribs, shoulder blades and shoulders causes greater movement in the back of the heart and

2) upward pressure is applied to the heart by the diaphragm.
These two directional forces compress and release the heart muscle and pericardium in a toning, rhythmic massage.

This heart massage, combined with the massage of the other internal organs of the lower belly breathing, now tones and increases blood circulation to all your internal organs.

Start with two breaths and gradually increase to thirty breaths, combining breathing from the lower back (kidneys), complete breathing from the front and sides of the belly and breathing from the upper back.

Lesson 9

Introducing Energy into the DantienContinue practicing everything you’ve learned.Now add breathing to the dantien. The lower point of the dantien is located below the navel, about a third of the distance to the genitals, slightly above the pubic hair, in the center of the abdomen, halfway between the surface of the belly skin and the spine, along the central channel.

It is the only energy center in the body that controls and regulates all the energies that affect physical health.
You should try to find this place in the body through sensation rather than visualization.
This energy center has an initially diffuse and eventually clear sensation, distinct from everything around it.
It cannot be physically seen by the eye, although it can be felt energetically or even seen psychically by a sufficiently trained or sensitive individual.

Imagine the energy moving in and out with your breath and feel yourself breathing into your dantien in four progressive steps, reaching ease in one step before moving on to the next.

Step 1:

At the front of the body, inhale from the skin to the dantien and exhale from the dantien to the skin.

Then inhale the energy from the etheric body – the space three to six centimeters outside the physical body – towards your dantien.

Exhale from the lower dantien, through the physical body, past the physical body and back to where you originally inhaled from the etheric body.

The continuous awareness of the flow of the mind should now be moving beyond the sensation of physical matter into the body of qi.

Step 2

The acupuncture point called mingmen, or “gate of life”, is located on the spine directly behind the dantien.
As well as being a primary control point for eliminating lower back pain and allowing the movement of energy along the spine, it is also the energy control point for the kidneys, which are the source of vitality and thus the life of the human body.

The mingmen opens up the life force in a person.

Inhale from the mingmen point to the lower dantien.
Now exhale from the dantien to the mingmen.
Gradually progress to thirty complete breaths.

Step 3 Combine steps 1 and 2 together. Inhale simultaneously from the front and back. At the front, inhale from the boundary of the etheric body at the point just beyond the dantien; at the back, inhale from the etheric boundary just beyond the mingmen. With this inhalation, bring the energy of the breath from both directions simultaneously through your etheric body, skin and flesh to the lower dantien.

As you exhale, allow the energy of the breath to exit simultaneously in a straight line from the dantien, passing through the etheric body at both the front and back.
This will activate the dai mai.

The dai mai is an extraordinary acupuncture meridian that circles the body from the dantien to the gate of life – the mingmen – and back to the dantien.
It has a special place in the body’s energy system.

The dai mai belt meridian crosses, connects and integrates all twelve of the body’s main vertical acupuncture meridians.
Initially, breathing from the dantien to the mingmen activates the dai mai, and energizes all the other acupuncture meridians simultaneously.

The energy lines within the body, as well as its external aura up to the edge of the etheric body, are directly connected to each other in a circular relationship, where one activates the other.

When the dantien breath continues beyond the skin to the edge of your etheric or aura, it connects the two primary points (front and back) in the outer aura and thus activates, integrates and strengthens the entire aura.

When the auriferous energy is activated, it strengthens the forces of the acupuncture meridian lines.
This strengthening forms the gateway through which you can progressively become aware of the energy throughout the aura.

This Taoist breathing method was also historically used in Chinese Chan Buddhism.

And it performs two functions:
(a) it makes the body sensitive, healthy and strong, and
(b) it extends the consciousness of the mind to the body of qi.

Consequently, the ability to be consciously aware of what is happening in the mindstream for long periods of time is expanded.

Gradually build up the breathing from the dantien to the mingmen from two to thirty breaths.

Step 4

This is really an optional step that should only be done after step 3 has completely stabilized.
If you don’t have much experience with energy work, it’s best to continue practicing step 3 for a minimum of three months before progressing to step 4.

As this stabilization occurs, the subtle sensation of the breath moving back and forth along the line between the etheric body and the dantien should be clearly felt, of being connected and continuous.

Once this has happened, the dai mai will activate automatically.
As your awareness grows with the practice, the sensation of the dai mai enveloping you should progressively become clearer, both on the skin and in the etheric body.

Being able to feel the dai mai will make it significantly easier for you to both increase strength and consciously unite energy with the dantien.

(a) Inhale and breathe energy from the entire circumference of the dai mai on your skin, through your body and into the dantien.
Breathe out and return the breath energy from your dantien, through your body and into the entire circumference of the dai mai on your skin.

(b) Inhale and, from the entire circumference of the dai mai in your etheric body, breathe energy through the air, into the skin and through the body into the dantien.
Exhale and, reversing the same path, breathe energy from the adntien, through the body, to the entire circumference of the dai mai on the skin and through the air to the entire circumference of the dai mai in your etheric body.